


thought of you

by marchh



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gift Giving, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, amorphous timeline, ridiculous over the top amounts of fluff, well more like legal ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchh/pseuds/marchh
Summary: Jim's on a routine call when he gets the epiphany that he's a sap.prompt: valentine’s day
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Jim Gordon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41
Collections: Gobblepot Week 2020





	thought of you

Jim is out responding to a pawn shop shootout when it hits him, when he realizes how truly and utterly fucked he is, how much the city’s changed him.

Because that’s when he sees the knife.

A swanky, ivory-handled butterfly knife carved and lacquered with elegant swirls, a motif reminiscent of feathers, and a regal peacock or swan-looking waterfowl with a dramatic tail set into the handle.

“Perps tried to make it look like a regular stick up, and it might’ve worked if we didn’t know this joint doubles as a drop off for some of the city’s fences,” Harvey tells him, footsteps gently crackling over the broken glass on the ground of the storefront.

“Uh-huh,” Jim says, not taking his eye off the delicate little weapon, almost too dainty to be considered deadly, really. Deceptively ornamental. He picks it up and flips the blade out. Smooth. Beautiful. It glimmers dangerously in the light. “That’s what I thought too. And why kill the owner if the cash register’s been unlocked? Plus the execution-style bullet in his head? These are longtime gangsters. That rifle in his arms has to be planted.”

Behind him, Harvey checks out the store owner on the ground and scoffs.

“You’re right about the bullet in his head. Cameras aren’t smashed but doesn’t look like they were ever hooked up either. Unis are across the street trying to drudge up a witness.”

“Any...ledgers? Any idea of what was stolen? What they were after?” Jim asks. Harvey says something but Jim’s still studying the knife. What exactly were the legalities of trying to...purchase something from a dead man’s shop? He was completely willing to pay. Just. Not quite sure how to do it. Surely it couldn’t be considered evidence, seeing as it was left in one piece, ignored by the thieves. 

Jim sighs, long and hard, and grits his teeth, rues the day he set foot into the city. He pockets up the knife.

.

“Hey.”

Oswald can’t help the happy almost-jump in his seat when Jim steps around the dining table - quite a trek - to plant a kiss on his cheek before circling back around to take his own seat. It’s been months - nearly half a  _ year _ since they’ve settled into their comfortable new arrangement, and he still has to pinch himself every once in a while.

Jim looks up at him through his lashes and there’s a coy, blink-and-you-miss-it impish look. Oswald takes pause. He didn’t become king of the underground without a prodigious ability to read people, and he can tell when someone is not just lying, but hiding something. 

Oswald narrows his eyes and purses his lips, and the theatrical pause has Jim throwing him an easy grin.

“Dinner looks great,” he comments, deliberately obtuse.

“Jim Gordon, what did you do?” Oswald demands. 

“What?”

“Don’t give me that look.” That wide-eyed innocent look that isn’t at all convincing, but persuasive all the same and Jim must know it. 

There is a stand-off (or, well, a stare-off), and Oswald wins. Jim exhales a little puff of air, and shifts in his seat like a guilty perp.

“I was going to wait until after dinner,” he says, and then Oswald realizes Jim is going for his pocket and his eyes go wide.

“You said no gifts!” Oswald is chagrined. He should have known this was going to happen, and he should have gone behind Jim’s back to arrange a gift anyway. But no, sucker he is, he let himself be beguiled by Jim’s charms, and agreed - stupidly! - to let their first Valentine’s be a romantic night in, just the two of them, no pomp and circumstance, no gifts.

At least Jim has the decency to look properly guilty at that.

“It’s just, you give me gifts all the time. I didn’t want you to go out of your way today to arrange things when what I really wanted was to spend time with you. The whole weekend. You promised.”

“Yes, yes I indeed did promise, James, that I wouldn’t engage in any work for a long weekend. And evidently you’ve gone and broken your end of the bargain,” Oswald says. Old scripts, perhaps, but he’s not  _ truly _ mad. Jim’s bashful request that Oswald spend three days with him - as if it were a burden, as if Oswald might  _ refuse _ \- was so sweet it was a gift in and of itself. 

Rather than explain in platitudes, or defend himself in words, Jim pulls out a small box - cardboard, likely something he picked up separately after he’d bought whatever knick knack it was, and slides it across the table.

Oswald snatches it up. He eyes Jim imperiously as he weighs the box.

“I saw it, and it immediately made me think of you.” Jim runs a hand through his hair. “I picked it up without thinking. I hadn’t planned - I didn’t realize-”

If it's some penguin paraphernalia, Oswald will throw a fit. 

He tosses the perfunctory ribbon aside, and lifts the lid.

And his mouth falls open. 

Oswald picks up the knife inside, and sets down the box. The blade slides out with a satisfying smoothness, and he flips it closed again. He turns his eyes on Jim, and he could make any number of jokes right now, from teasing his detective about illegal arms and concealed weaponry to something about anniversaries. But the words don’t come. His detective boyfriend got him a knife. As a Valentine’s Day gift. Because the beautiful little weapon, Oswald’s favored weapon, reminded Jim of him.

“I could kiss you right now,” he says instead, with practiced calm, and is rewarded with that million-watt smile of Jim’s, before he stands to lean over, and realizes the table is too big. Jim frowns, then comes around, dragging his chair with him.

“We really need a smaller table,” he says, and Oswald pulls him down for a kiss. 


End file.
